


The Truth Hurts

by kelmeister



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Courtroom Drama, Episode Related, F/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:54:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26761714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kelmeister/pseuds/kelmeister
Summary: Missing scene for Lucifer episode 2x10, "Quid Pro Ho:" Chloe let her father's killer go rather than throw Lucifer under the bus. Dan wants to know why.
Relationships: Chloe Decker & Dan Espinoza
Kudos: 54





	The Truth Hurts

Neither moves as the courtroom empties. Chloe, in the witness box, hands tightly clasped, back ramrod straight, eyes glittering with unshed tears. Dan, slumped in a chair in the gallery, deflated, defeated.

There’s a weight in the air, as neither speaks to the other. Heavy with the years between them, bowing under Palmetto Street, microscopic fissures caused by his betrayal that she can’t even see. And Lucifer, the massive straw that breaks them.

Dan can no longer stand the silence. “Chloe–”

“No,” she pleads, “don’t.”

But he can’t stop, not after everything he’s done for her, to her. After everything that’s happened. “What did you do?”

Seconds tick by. Minutes. She won’t answer him. Can’t. Does she even know what she did?

Dan slowly rises, approaches the bench. She involuntarily flinches under the questions that are sure to come, questions for which she’s not sure she has answers.

“Chloe,” he murmurs, “what happened here?”

She heaves out a sigh. “My dad is dead.”

Dan nods. “I thought you wanted justice.”

“I did. I do.” Chloe’s clenched fists turn white in her lap. “It’s what I want more than anything.”

“Then, why?” Dan braces himself against the cold wooden railing separating them, leaning into his cross examination.

“We _lied_ , Dan.” She finally looks at him, tears threatening to fall. “On that report, we both lied.” She shakes her head. “And then, to come up here, and lie again?”

Dan shakes his head in return. “That wasn’t what–”

“ _No_ ,” she hisses, a hand raised to stop his thought. “My dad’s death…everything I’ve ever done since then was trying to live up to him, live up to what I thought he’d want for me.” Her hand drops. “But this case...from the very start, everything I did.…” She looks at Dan, her eyes pleading. “I’m turning into everything my dad hated, everything he was fighting against when he died.”

With a frustrated shove, Dan pushes himself away from her. “That’s not what was happening here, and you know it.”

“Do I? All the people who’ve died because of this case, Dan. And I was going to come up here and destroy Lucifer, too, and for _what_?”

“For justice.”

“No.” She glances down at her fists in her lap. “It’s not justice if I compromise who I am and everything I believe in to get it.”

A tear finally escapes, rolls down Chloe’s cheek. Instinctively, Dan’s body is drawn to her, his fingers outstretched to catch it as it falls before he recoils, remembering his place, remembering that’s no longer who they are.

“What about Perry Smith,” he asks, but he already knows the answer.

“He’s cocky.” When she looks up at him, there’s a hint of a smile, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “He’ll screw up, eventually. We’ll get him then.”

A moment ago, from this seat she refused to lie to a jury about Lucifer. Now, just the two of them: he knows she’s lying to them both.

Without another word, Chloe rises and leaves the witness box. As she passes him, she brushes his hand with hers, the merest touch he wants to believe is a reassuring squeeze. He doesn’t return it, doesn’t follow her out.

Instead Dan turns, gaze falling upon the empty defense table, the empty seat where Perry spent the past days smugly observing his freedom draw closer. There’s already a ghost of a plan haunting the dark, hidden places in his mind.

 _She is truly good_ , Lucifer said, about Chloe. She is truly good. And since Palmetto, Dan is… _lost_.

He pulls out his phone, scrolls through his contacts.

“Maze,” he says, when it picks up on the third ring, “I may need your help.”


End file.
